US: When Californians get mad, they often get even by using the ballot box to change a law or even a governor they do not like.
So-called direct democracy in the form of initiatives, referendums and recalls have long allowed Californians to enact social and political changes effecting everything from property taxes to horse-track betting to yesterday's special election on whether to recall - i.e. sack - the state's governor, Gray Davis.
"One thing that can easily be said about Californians is they don't have hesitations about using the initiative process when they want to make change," said Mr Dane Waters, president of the non-profit Initiative and Referendum Institute.
Mr Waters noted that while 24 states allow citizens to gather signatures to qualify initiatives on the ballot, California residents are among the leaders in actually using the process to force change.
He added that 18 states provide for gubernatorial recalls, which were introduced along with initiatives and referendums in the early part of the 20th century as a way to make public officials and lawmakers more accountable.
Californians considered their first initiative in 1912 when they voted against regulating horse race betting. Since then citizens have qualified 275 measures for the ballot, approving 96 of them.
"People use the process more sparingly in other places," said Mr Waters, who noted Oregon's 301 initiatives hold the lead across the US. Initiatives have repeatedly reshaped California's legal, political and social landscape. In recent years, residents of the nation's most populous state have enacted term limits for politicians, sent criminals to prison for life for three felony convictions and allowed the use of medicinal marijuana.
The use of direct democracy has also sparked a raft of measures ranging from the odd - banning the consumption of horse meat and the dissection of any living person - to the controversial, including Proposition 187, which denied social services to illegal immigrants.
But perhaps no other measure has had the impact of Proposition 13 in 1978, which put a cap on property taxes and set off a tax reform earthquake that quickly spread to ballots across the nation.
"It exposed a lot of people around the country to the power of the initiative," Mr Waters said. Apart from deciding the fate of Gov Davis - and that of his myriad challengers, - yesterday's ballot was also over a plan that would limit the racial data the state can collect and another aimed at boosting state spending on public-works projects.
Experts say that as California goes, so often goes the rest of the US.
Residents in other states have followed California's lead in other areas such as campaign finance reform, term limits and tax reform.